Netflix Briefly Strained by ‘Stranger Things’ Season Five Launch
Los angeles,CA – Netflix experienced technical difficulties within minutes of releasing the first four episodes of Stranger Things‘ fifth and final season on Thursday,though a complete service outage was averted. The streaming giant had proactively increased bandwidth by 30% in anticipation of high demand, according to series co-creator Ross Duffer, who shared the data on Instagram.
This isn’t the first time Netflix has struggled to handle surges in viewership during major events. Previous incidents include crashes during the Mike Tyson v Jake Paul boxing bout and a live Love is Blind reunion in 2024, as well as a brief outage coinciding with the release of the final two episodes of Stranger Things season four in 2022. The latest strain comes as the highly anticipated season finale has already driven all previous seasons of Stranger Things onto Netflix’s top 10 charts – a first for any series on the platform.
Stranger Things, set in the 1980s in the fictional Indiana town of Hawkins, centers on a group of residents grappling with a gateway opened to another dimension known as the Upside Down.the fifth season, three years in the making, features a time jump to address the aging of its young cast – Millie Bobby Brown, Finn Wolfhard, Noah Schnapp, Caleb McLaughlin, and Gaten Matarazzo – who have starred in the series since its 2016 debut, alongside established actors including Winona Ryder, David harbour, Joe Keery, and Natalia Dyer.
Co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer have stated that season five will include “the most violent death of any season.” Sadie Sink, who joined the cast in season two, described filming her final scenes as feeling like “saying goodbye to your childhood.”
